Ever been humbled?
Background: This year I have been babysitting for two awesome boys after school. Ben is 7, Zack is 10, and they are so great.
This story involves Ben.
Ben is going through that amazing 1st grade reading boom. When he started school he just went into it with this earnest desire to learn how to read. It was all he talked about. He was so mad when he couldn’t read after the first week of school. Now, he can read, it’s so cool.
So anyway he has also developed really strong likes and dislikes. When I left for training camp he wouldn’t play board games, now he’s really into Monopoly. I have a deeply rooted dislike for Monopoly, but we’ll get to that.
Here’s our conversation after we come in from school:
“Ben, what do you want to do today?”
“Sarah, I Challenge you to a game of Mopoly!!”
“Do you mean Monopoly?”
“Yeah, Mopoly”
“Ben, say it like this “Mon-o-poly, you’re dropping a syllable” (side note: He knows what syllables are now, how awesome is that?)
“Whatever Sarah, my way to say it is shorter… and better”
Point for Ben.
So we start to set up Mopoly and I am just dreading the next two hours of my life…
But, God can use your strengths; God can use your weaknesses, right?
The only strength that I bring to this story is that I love Ben and his passion for this idea. Weaknesses are plentiful. I am not good with money, I do not have a long attention span, and as I mentioned, I hate monopoly.
So I justify this as a chance to make Ben feel good about his idea, practice being patient, and maybe even practice some money skills so I don’t drive my team treasurer nuts next year! Plus, he’s
only seven, how bad can it be right?
Well, 1 hour and 45 minutes later: my brain is mush, Ben is dancing around the room every time I land on his well-developed property and I have $84 to my name (figure not exaggerated for story telling purposes). To make an already embarrassing situation worse, Jennifer has come home from work and is getting out Ziplocs so that we can store the game and finish playing next week. A seven year old has schooled me in Monopoly and will continue the stomping of my pride into next week.
So anyway, I’ll let you pull whatever moral you want out of this story… I’m not even sure there is one. I just like that God can even use a 7 year old and a Mopoly board to keep me humble for one more day.
